Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 15 – There are two
important aspects to the upcoming referendum on constitutional amendments that
have received too little attention, Vladislav Inozemtsev says. On the one hand,
it “annules” not just Putin’s terms in office but the legitimacy of the Russian
state. And on the other, it assumes Putin will be re-elected again and again
because he can run.
The amendments Russians have been
asked to approve make the Russian state more beholden on its predecessor than
do any other constitution in Europe or America, documents which are based on
starting afresh rather that reifying what went before them, the commentator
says (t.me/kremlebezBashennik/14542).
“Not a single Basic Law postulates
the primacy of national law, putting the state in which it operates, in the position
of an outlaw with which it is senseless to conclude any treaties or agreements.”
Nor does any so fear its own status that it prohibits those at the top from
having dual citizenship or the right to live in other countries.
No other constitution “tramples so
demonstratively the judicial power and offers the chief of state the right to
name part of the deputies of the upper chamber of parliament” or declares only
one of the ethnoses which form its population “state-forming,” leaving all the
others out and in a second-class status.
Thus, Inozemtsev says, “the constitution
of Russia is not the constitution of a contemporary state. It is a collection
of understandings by which the country has lived already for a long time but
whose legitimation devalues its status as a state.” A critical example of this
is its assumption that if it gives the president the right to be re-elected, he
will be.
There are simply “too many cases
from recent history” which show that eternal rule zeroes out above all respect
for the ruler and willingness to subordinate oneself to his decisions,” the
commentator says; and because that is so, most constitutions are based on an
understanding that such an arrangement is to be avoided.
“By destroying Russian statehood,”
he continues, “the present-day elite makes its fate dependent not on law to
which it and the people should be subordinate but exclusively on the changing
attitudes of the masses,” exactly the reverse of what a constitution which sets the rules of the game is supposed to
do.
Four years before an expected
election campaign, “the people are thus deprived of any intrigue – and considering
the economic and social ‘successes’ of the country recently, they are confronted
with hopelessness. It seems to me,” Inozemtsev says, “that no one in the
Kremlin now recognizes the consequences of this.”
“Finally,” he says, “one cannot fail
to repeat the obvious: the Constitution was changed with a clear violation of
the very procedures it defines as required.” As a result, “the only (if not
self-evident) change to save the situation could be the holding of a large
competitive campaign for its approval on the basis of honest and formalized voting.”
But as of now, “everything has been
done for zeroing out any hopes that the July 1 measures are being organized to
hear the voice of the people. I am convinced,” Inozemtsev concludes, “that each
who goes to the polls or votes electronic will remember the choice he or she
has made.”
“With this choice, millions of
Russians will have to live in a state which has annulled its own legitimacy.
For how long, I am far from sure.”
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